RUTHFULLY YOURS

While visiting New York City on 9/21, London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan evidenced mild chagrin in saying terrorist attacks should be seen as “part and parcel of living in a big city.” He added, “It is a reality, I’m afraid, that London, New York, and other major cities around the world have got to be prepared for these sorts of things.”

Mayor Khan makes it clear that preparing for the sort of thing that causes streets to run with the blood of dozens of innocents should not involve a military response. He advocates police staying “in touch with communities” and “exchanging ideas and best practices.”

Two aspects of conditioned helplessness are being inflicted on the citizens of Europe and the USA, numbing and incapacitating them enough to surrender their national sovereignty and traditional ways of life to the deepening darkness of globalism. One aspect is the increasingly laughable harangue by left-wing politicians that patriotic people are racio/phobio/blah-blah-blahists suffering cases of blah-blah-blahism. Americans receive a new mental diagnosis every week, and they all indicate something very, very bad about us. President Obama doesn’t pass up a chance to insult the American people, preferably in front of an international audience. Hillary brought a bit of literary flair to her insults with the “basket of deplorables” remark. Shoulder to shoulder with the other prominent destroyers of great nation-states and proud developers of lawless tribal territories, Mayor Khan didn’t miss the chance to denigrate the tens of millions of Americans who support Donald Trump. Khan’s racist-shmacist in-your-face-ist shot was that the Trump movement is “driven by scapegoating.”

But there is a deeper, more psychologically crippling aspect to the mass psychology of globalist takeover then the vilification of patriots, and Khan has chosen to spearhead it. In his original learned helplessness experiments (now widely considered unethical), psychologist Martin Seligman electrically shocked dogs, which were divided into groups that could or could not do something to stop the shocks. The dogs for whom the shocks were inescapable developed what Seligman called learned helplessness. The most helpless dogs simply gave up, lay down, and whimpered.

It was no surprise that in the first hours after the New York and New Jersey bombing attacks, the culprit was widely suggested to be a “lone wolf.” The term, used to describe an individual inspired by others but acting on his or her own, has become the counterterrorism metaphor-of-choice in the age of the Islamic State.

It’s time, however, to put the lone-wolf metaphor, and its associated counterterrorism analysis, out to pasture.

It’s time, however, to put the lone-wolf metaphor, and its associated counterterrorism analysis, out to pasture. According to Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, we now live in a world where terrorism is “carried out by those who live among us in the homeland and self-radicalize, inspired by terrorist propaganda on the internet.”

But if that diagnosis isn’t wrong, it is incomplete. The New York bomber may have been “self-radicalized,” but it’s very unlikely he was merely “inspired” by terrorist groups.

There’s no doubt the Islamic State has been exceedingly explicit, and calculating, in its calls for lone-wolf attacks. In an online e-book titled How to Survive in the West: A Mujahid Guide (2015) the group argued: “With less attacks in the West being group (networked) attacks and an increasing amount of lone-wolf attacks, it will be more difficult for intelligence agencies to stop an increasing amount of violence and chaos from spreading in the West.” The group’s call to action has been amplified, first, by its talent at promoting it through social media (the Mujahid guide was distributed widely on Twitter); and second, the authority lent to the group by virtue of its participation in the Syrian war and its purported re-establishment of the caliphate.

Clearly, this has had some effect. In recent years, the pool of potential homegrown terrorists has expanded: Today there are open investigations on about 1,000 potential homegrown violent extremists in all 50 states. And yet, not all of America’s radicalized individuals have been motivated by the Islamic State’s appeals for lone wolves. Ahmad Khan Rahani, the suspect believed to have been behind the bombings in New York and New Jersey, reportedly was inspired by the U.S.-born al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — who was killed in 2011 by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen, but whose radical preaching lives on in online videos. He traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, areas where al Qaeda and the Taliban are more prevalent than the Islamic State. A note apparently left by the bomber referred to Awlaki and the Boston Marathon bombers, who were also inspired by Awlaki.

‘I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy, if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election,” a particularly hopped-up-looking President Obama shouted to the Congressional Black Caucus on Saturday night. “You wanna gimme a good sendoff? Go vote!”

First, just imagine the national burning and looting that would erupt, starting inside America’s newsrooms, if Donald J. Trump said he would consider it a “personal insult” if white people did not vote for him.

Second, how insulting!

Obama speaks about black people as if we were his servants, and he our master.

Black people owe Obama nothing. Au contraire, he owes black people plenty. Black voters turned out and backed him by 95 percent in 2008, according to the Roper Center. And then, in 2012, black support plunged — all the way down to 93 percent.

And in exchange for this blind loyalty, black folks got what from Obama? Very little. The promised land that many expected never arrived. In most cities, black neighborhoods still tend to be the go-to places for economic hardship, educational disadvantage, and crime.

Obama’s economic performance among black Americans has been highly mixed, at best, with recent bright spots overshadowed by years of abundant bad news. Since he became president, according to the latest-available data, here is how black Americans have fared on selected economic indicators:

Unemployment rate: Down 36.2 percent

Labor-force-participation rate: Down 2.1 percent

Proportion below the poverty line: Down 6.6 percent

Real median household income: Up 2.5 percent

Food Stamp participants: Up 58.2 percent

Home ownership: Down 9.5 percent

(For further details, please click here.)

The United States is at war with international terrorists, who, as the 9/11 Commission noted, must first enter the United States in order to attack it.

Consider the preface of the official government report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel: Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States” that begins with the following paragraph:

It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.

Furthermore, although much has been made of the lack of integrity with respect to the U.S./Mexican border, the 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel observed that most terrorists had entered the United States through international airports and then committed visa fraud and immigration benefit fraud to embed themselves in the country.

Page 54 of the report contained this excerpt under the title “3.2 Terrorist Travel Tactics by Plot,” which makes these issues crystal clear:

Although there is evidence that some land and sea border entries (of terrorists) without inspection occurred, these conspirators mainly subverted the legal entry system by entering at airports.

In doing so, they relied on a wide variety of fraudulent documents, on aliases, and on government corruption. Because terrorist operations were not suicide missions in the early to mid-1990s, once in the United States terrorists and their supporters tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to remain here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud, by claiming political asylum, and by marrying Americans. Many of these tactics would remain largely unchanged and undetected throughout the 1990s and up to the 9/11 attack.

Thus, abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity. It would remain largely unknown, since no agency of the United States government analyzed terrorist travel patterns until after 9/11. This lack of attention meant that critical opportunities to disrupt terrorist travel and, therefore, deadly terrorist operations were missed.

The commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service on Wednesday denied that he ordered his staff to destroy thousands of emails sought by Congress in 2014 during its investigation into the IRS targeting scandal.

Unapologetic and defiant two years ago, John Koskinen appeared very subdued and contrite today as he expressed “regret” for making incorrect statements during his testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in 2014. “Some of my testimony later proved mistaken,” Koskinen conceded. But he insisted that he had testified honestly to the best of his knowledge at the time.

Via the Washington Examiner:

Republicans on the judiciary panel slammed Koskinen for presiding over the destruction of backup tapes that housed Lerner’s emails.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, highlighted the “coincidence” that occurred when documents that had sat untouched for two years disappeared off the tapes shortly after investigators requested copies.

Koskinen faces potential impeachment at the hands of House conservatives over his handling of the IRS targeting probe, particularly over his pledge to provide emails that had already been erased at the time of his testimony.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) asked Koskinen about his false statement under oath that “every email has been preserved.”

“What did you mean by every email?” Gowdy asked.

“I meant that every email that the IRS had that I knew of had been preserved,” Koskinen stated. “That was my honest belief.”

“Well why didn’t you say that?” Gowdy pressed.

“Well — If I knew then what I know now, I would have testified differently,” said Koskinen. “But at the time, I testified honestly about what I knew and what I’d been told. Nobody regrets more than I do that in some ways this case has been the case that keeps on giving with more information coming out. I wish that all the information had been put out to begin with,” he added.

“It is always always an option to answer,’I don’t know,'” Gowdy said. “Loretta Lynch has made a living of saying ‘I don’t know.'”

He added, “But you were incredibly definitive. You said nothing had been lost. What did you mean by nothing?”

Koskinen answered: “I meant at that time that I had been advised ‘nothing,’ but you’re exactly right, in retrospect, I would have been better advised to say ‘to the best of my knowledge,’ or ‘on the basis of what I’ve been told’ — which was in fact the basis of my testimony.”

Images released of the journal of Ahmad Khan Rahami, the suspected NY-NJ bomber, show mention of a recently killed ISIS leader, but that reference is curiously missing from the federal indictment filed against him yesterday.

Is the Justice Department again trying to hide an obvious ISIS connection or inspiration from this past weekend’s attacks, just as they did when they censored Orlando mass killer Omar Mateen’s pledge to ISIS?

Reporters began showing pages of Rahami’s journal earlier today:

First look at bloody journal discovered with alleged bomber Ahmad Rahami, this page cites Al Qaeda & ISIS leaders pic.twitter.com/AT9VsZS9qu

— Mike Levine (@MLevineReports) September 21, 2016

One of the references on the page is to “Brother Adnani,” an ISIS leader killed in a U.S. drone strike just a few weeks ago.

Media reports place Adnani at the head of the ISIS unit responsible for conducting external terror attacks.

Terror expert Tom Joscelyn noted the Adnani mention, as well as other ISIS-related items, from Rahami’s journal.

It appears from notes written by captured New York bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami that he was motivated by ISIS orders to carry out attacks inside America.

A newly released FBI complaint reveals a passage from a journal Rahami kept that contains “a reference to the instructions of terrorist leaders that, if travel is infeasible, to attack nonbelievers where they live.”

While the terrorist leaders are not identified in the complaint, it quotes fragments of a related passage: ” … back to sham [Syria.] But [unintelligible] this incident show the risk are [unintelligible] of getting caught under [unintelligible].”

It’s not immediately known if Rahami attempted to travel to Syria and join ISIS and its jihad there. But for the past several months, ISIS has called on its supporters to strike in the West if they were prevented from traveling to the lands of the so-called caliphate, including Syria and Iraq.

In May, ISIS spokesman Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Adnani advised followers that if American and other Western authorities “have shut the door of hijrah [migration] in your faces,” then “open the door of jihad in theirs.” In his notes, Rahami appears to comply with the plan, praying to Allah to help him carry out “jihad” at home without interference from “the F.B.I. & homeland security.” He started ordering bomb components in June.

“Make your deed a source of their regret,” said al-Adnani, who was killed earlier this month. “Truly, the smallest act you do in their lands is more beloved to us than the biggest act done here; it is more effective for us and more harmful to them.”

Added al-Adnani: “If one of you wishes and strives to reach the lands of the Islamic State, then each of us wishes to be in your place to make examples of the crusaders, day and night, scaring them and terrorizing them, until every neighbor fears his neighbor.”

Adnani told would-be jihadists they should “not make light of throwing a stone at a crusader in his land,” nor should they “underestimate any deed, as its consequences are great for the mujahidin and its effect is noxious to the disbelievers.”

In its latest issue of Dabiq magazine, “Break the Cross,” the Islamic State encourages Muslims in the West who are unable to migrate to “the Caliphate” to “serve a much greater purpose” by striking “behind enemy lines.”

“The blood of the disbelievers is obligatory to spill by default. The command is clear. Kill the disbelievers, as Allah said, ‘Then kill the polytheists wherever you find them,'” the magazine said.

“As they haphazardly kill Muslims in their war against the mujahidin,” it exhorted, “it becomes even more obligatory for you to attack the Crusader nations and their citizens in their homelands.”